If Bullfrogs Had Wings
by Invisible Ranger (HBF), 2011
Disclaimer: TAT belongs to SJC and Universal. This is strictly for the jazz and not for profit.
Dedicated: To all my single friends on Valentine's Day. There's somebody for us all out there…I know it.
xxx
"It's really raining out there!"
Erica, it turned out, was as subtle as a swift kick in the ass. She had a real talent for stating the obvious. Outside the little Italian place, the heavens were unleashing a late winter torrent of rain just warm enough not to freeze. Sure, it was raining just a bit. Just like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were a bit dishonest.
When Murdock didn't respond to her right away, she pulled at his jacket sleeve. "Honey? You all right?"
That, it turned out, was a hard question to answer. Should I tell her about the homicidal Cuban guerrillas from last week? The pinched nerve in my lower back? Oh, I know… maybe my unexpected career change from school crossing guard to fish market worker? What the hell would Face do?
"I'm fine," he said. He wished the waiter would hurry back with more of that stale garlic bread. Anything to break the silence.
"Well, you look fine," Erica told him. "You're really cute, you know? Like that one actor, on that one soap…what's his name?"
That was so funny, because he'd actually debated long and hard what to wear tonight. He'd finally settled on his usual attire for several reasons. It was a date, but it wasn't really a date. Strictly casual. Just two people from the same apartments going out for supper. It had been Erica's suggestion. She'd even offered to treat him.
There was also the problem of him only owning one suit. He hated that suit. This wasn't a suit and tie place anyway. So a t-shirt it was. The one Face had brought him that time from Key West, that read "Orange You Glad You're In FL?"
Just in time, the waiter arrived with more bread. He was a skinny kid with splotches of acne on his cheeks. When he spoke, he sounded out of breath. "Hey, you guys…I mean, are you ready to order?" he asked in a thick Bronx accent, panting.
Murdock looked the menu up and down. There were a ton of dishes he normally liked, a few he loved, but for some reason, he didn't feel the least bit hungry tonight. "I guess I'll just have the spaghetti," he sighed. Even a second-rate place like this usually didn't mess up spaghetti.
Erica asked for the linguini with clam sauce, light on the sauce, and the kid nodded, jotted on his notepad, and took the greasy plastic menus with him. "So, H.M., you promised me you were gonna tell me about L.A." She cupped one hand under her chin.
It was as if she'd stabbed him with a sharpened pencil. Though he'd only recently been back in the line of duty, Murdock realized he missed the City of Angels more than ever. No lousy apartments, no endless rainy winter nights or thankless, mindless jobs. No Hunt "Hardass" Stockwell. Only four white walls, which, though a prison, had always been his own.
"Y'know, it's really not like that glamorous stuff on TV," he said, waving a hand casually. "I kinda like it out here better." Damn. Don't lie.
"What did you do out there? Flying?"
The pencil drove itself deeper. Right through his heart. "Yeah. Flying, mostly." A lump was forming in his throat which had nothing to do with the garlic bread.
"Wow. I bet that was lots of fun. I had an uncle who was a pilot. He died fighting in the Pacific," said Erica, nodding solemnly.
And part of me died flying from L.A. out here.
"It was." There was nothing else to say. Nothing else that would adequately convey how he felt a joyous rush, a high the strongest narcotic could not begin to approximate, every time he stepped into a cockpit.
The waiter came back from the kitchen laden with two steaming plates of pasta. He placed the linguini in front of Murdock and gave the spaghetti to Erica. "Enjoy, folks."
Murdock cleared his throat and made a quick "switcheroo" gesture. As the kid blushed and switched plates, he realized that it could just as easily be him working in a greasy spoon like this, on a cold and wet Tuesday night, begging for tips from a half-dozen tables.
Maybe it was better if she were treating after all.
She twirled away with her fork and kept on talking. Murdock normally hated anyone doing that, but with Erica, it was just part of her. She was a talker. He was a listener. He indulged her.
"Do you have friends out here? Or family? Is that why you came all the way here from L.A.?" she asked through a mouthful of linguini.
He'd been expecting her to ask that question eventually. They'd been chatting off and on for a couple of weeks now: at the Laundromat, the mailboxes, or outside the apartments coming and going. It had started friendly and casual, and mostly stayed that way. But they were on a date (that wasn't really a date) now…which meant a line of questioning beyond the weather and the Redskins' next draft pick. As the Colonel might have said, they'd breached the first perimeter.
"H.M.? You're being quiet and mysterious again," she joked.
"I thought girls liked guys who were quiet and mysterious. Like James Bond, you know?" It was lame, he knew, but it was the first thing that popped into his head. And it saved him having to explain a lot of things that she wouldn't understand anyway.
She laughed; thankfully she'd swallowed her mouthful of pasta. She actually had a nice laugh; feminine and gentle. "You're funny, too. I like that."
"So you don't think I'm like James Bond, huh?" It wouldn't hurt to try and joke back, or to change the subject.
"I didn't say that, H.M." Erica winked. "You're just a really nice guy. There aren't many left. Last guy I dated was a real creep…" She trailed off suddenly.
He looked at her from across the little round table, as if seeing her for the first time. In some strange way he was. The glow of the candles softened her features, made her hair glow almost like a halo, helped to make her prettier than she was. He only ever saw her in her waitress uniform or casual clothes on the weekends, not a dress and matching earrings like what she wore tonight. She was pretty in her own way.
But the little voice inside his head, the one that had always whispered to him in the airspace over the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands, the one which had kept him alive for so long, was throwing a fit.
She's not for you. Look at her all you want…just don't touch, all right, ol' buckaroo?
"You really get a cute look on your face when you're thinking. Did you know that?" asked Erica, snapping him momentarily back to the Real World.
"Do I?" He speared a meatball without much interest, turning its lumpy shape over and over, then finally popping it into his mouth. It wasn't bad, but the ones he made at home with the breadcrumbs were better. "I don't spend much time looking in the mirror," he finally admitted.
The candle in the wine bottle had burned down to a nub. Erica still had that soft glow, like the picture of an angel in a stained-glass window. She smiled and patted his free hand. "I bet you're really some kind of secret agent or something, and you're just not telling me."
Shit. Had she figured it out somehow? Impossible. She just didn't have enough brain cells to put the pieces together. Maybe it was Stockwell's weird sense of humor at work again. Murdock shrugged casually.
"I'm not a spy. I just play one on TV," he said in his best Robert Culp I Spy voice.
Erica laughed, nearly spitting out her sip of wine in the process. "God, you're so funny. Did you ever think about doing a routine? Like, down at the comedy club on amateurs' night? You'd be great!"
His stomach felt queasy, even though he'd only had a few bites of food. He knew it had nothing to do with pasta, and everything to do with the wrapped parcel of nerves inside him. "Um, yeah," he said weakly. "You, um, mind if I use the men's room real quick?"
She kept giggling, softly now, and nodded. "Sure, hon. You go right ahead and I'll get the check. Take your time."
It was the break he'd been wanting for the last ten minutes, and he bolted to freedom. The bathroom was tiny and dim, and, once inside, Murdock immediately splashed cold water on his face. The effect was jarring. He gasped, and looked into the mirror. His own pale face stared back, wide-eyed and haunted by too little sleep. Damn those guerrillas. He was just about to leave and rejoin Erica when a bit of scribbled graffiti underneath the mirror caught his eye. It wasn't the usual phone sex number or dirty rhyming line about some guy from Nantucket, but rather a single line:
Let it be.
Just like the rain outside, a flood of memories poured over him. Me and Faceman, hanging out in the hooch on the first day of monsoon season, singing Lennon and McCartney all off-key. Both of us young back then, thinking life was one big party. Hell, that was even before my first big firefight. We wore out that Beatles 45 pretty quick, and then the Big Guy broke the other one 'cause we played it so much…
"Sir? You okay?"
The kid had come in, a mop in one hand. Apparently he also moonlighted as a janitor.
"Oh." Murdock blinked. "Yeah. Just, um, not feeling well."
"Was it the spaghetti?" asked the kid, concerned, as if he were afraid he'd lose his tip.
"No, it was great." Murdock smiled. "I'll be sure to tell my friends about this place. Viva Coccino, right?"
"Villa Cucina," the kid said, butchering the Italian words. "Glad you enjoyed your meal. Just lettin' you know, we're about to close."
"Thanks. We'll be going pretty quick."
Erica hadn't moved from the little table with its cheery red-and-white tablecloth. She didn't see him coming, either: she was too busy powdering her nose with a compact. Murdock took a moment to observe her from behind one of the restaurant's ficus trees. For so long, he'd been waiting, hoping for the right one to come along. Someone with whom he could either play-wrestle or enjoy other physical pastimes, stay up late debating whether Ashkenazy or Stern was better on the violin, and boldly go where no man and woman had gone before. The One, with a capital "O."
Looking at her, he knew she wasn't for him. Not even close.
Never look a gift tank in the mouth, Captain. That voice he also knew, and it spoke whenever he needed to hear it most. Like now.
Erica was not what he needed. But she might have been what he needed right now.
Let it be…
"Oh, there you are, honey." She finished powdering and stashed the makeup in her purse. "I thought you'd fallen in. Or maybe you were just doing some secret agent stuff in there?"
"I'll never tell." And he wouldn't…at least not right now. He grinned and offered her his hand.
He pulled a wrinkled five from his pocket and, while Erica wasn't looking, dropped the bill on the table for the kid. Food was just so-so, but that guy might really need it more than I do. All but one of the other couples had gone, and they passed through the dining room to the doors in silence.
Outside, the rain had slackened from a downpour to a steady sheet. It was still soaking wet. A few cars trundled up the street, leaving wakes of muddy, cold water. Murdock realized that his fancy ride, the old El Camino, was parked about a block away, and that he'd left his umbrella back at the apartment.
"Honey, I can't walk to the car in this. It's my favorite dress. I'll get drenched." Erica pouted, shivering, pulling her coat close to her body.
"You don't have to." Outside Villa Cucina, on the patio, several wrought-iron tables sat huddled in the rain. One of them, even in winter, still had a large, bright red umbrella attached. Someone had obviously neglected it. Murdock tugged on it, and it came loose easily. The umbrella bloomed into a bright red hibiscus in the grey gloom, shielding both of them from the rain. Underneath its protection, they hurried across the street, dodging puddles like landmines. By the time they'd made it to the car, Murdock was surprised that he wasn't just out of breath.
He was grinning. The way he used to in L.A.
"That was, um, fun," Erica said, a little hiccup in her voice either from the dash across the avenue or the wine. "Do you always have adventures like that?"
It was another one of those questions he just couldn't answer. She wasn't ready to hear the truth. But he told it to her anyway, nice and simple. "Of course. But I'd have to kill you if I gave you all the details," he said with a loopy smile and a broad wink.
"H.M., you know, we gotta do this again real soon." She laughed and punched him playfully on the arm. "I can't tell you last time I had this much fun."
Just about every Friday night from now until June looked like it was wide open. Except for the one weekend in May, the one with the Star Trek convention in Philadelphia, he figured there were worse ways to spend his time than in the company of Erica, nose-powderer, incessant gabber, and Puppy Platter employee of the month for December 1986. She was just what he needed…for now. Until that day came.
Safely inside the El Camino, he started the engine, hearing the wipers splip-splop back and forth along with Erica's contented sigh. It was a gentle rhythm, one which he'd try to remember as he drifted off to sleep tonight.
Along with the wipers, somewhere in Murdock's distant memories, were the voices of a young pair of officers, already best friends, halfway around the world singing along with the Beatles in harmony. Convinced that nothing bad could ever, or would ever, happen to them.
Just let it be.
He swung the car into traffic, and headed back toward Haversham House and home.
Fini